ealth of the Hebrews was established by
God our Lord, the holy Job called upon those who were ready to fulfil
this office and to raise their voices in wailing and lamentation for
anyone who would hire them, to lament the day of his birth as if it
had been the day of his death? [95] This practice extended later to
an infinite number of nations, especially to the Canaanites, who
formed their troop of singers and musicians, and, with much skill
and effect, mourned the deceased, as they did at Sifara--the mother
beginning to intone a chant, which was then taken up by those most
learned and skilled in that office." [96]

The preservation of bodies, as far as possible, from corruption is
a common practice among all those nations who desired and attempted
to perpetuate the memory of their dead by burning the bodies and
preserving their ashes; by erecting sumptuous mausoleums or pyramids
(in their estimation, eternal); or by engraving in bronze or hard
stone the names and deeds of their dead.

Burial in the house of the deceased was a custom of the Ethiopians;
and burial at their gates, of the Persians. The adornment of the corpse
with jewels and rich garments was practiced by the Hebrews, Persians,
and Indians, and, before their time, by all the eastern Arabs of the
age and country of holy Job; they filled their houses (which were
rather their sepulchres than their abodes) with treasures of gold and
silver." [97] The custom of placing in the mouth of the corpse gold
or other means for the purchase of necessities and, in particular,
of a safe passage, is much ridiculed by Lucian, in those ancients of
theirs negotiating for the boat and ferry of Charon; and indeed it
served no other end than to excite the covetousness of those who,
to profit by the gold, opened the sepulchres and disinterred the
dead--as Hyrcanus and Herod desecrated the grave of David, and the
Ternates did in Bohol, as we shall later see." [98]

As for the banquets, they were precisely those which occurred at the
ancient festivals and funeral feasts practiced by all countries and
nations, sacred and profane. [99]

The observance of silence seems to be what not only the profane
writers meant by summoning mortals to the shades and darkness, mute
and silent; but what the sacred writers intended in calling death
and dead men mute.

In the sacred tongue they called the sepulchre itself "silence," [100]
or "the place of silence"--on account both of the dumbness